Today's Opinions

By CHARLES C. HAYNES
First Amendment Center
Like thousands of other public school students across the country, seniors in Irving, Texas, will graduate from high school next month — although in Irving they’ll go to church to get their diplomas.
The venue is the Potter House, a megachurch led by Bishop T.D. Jakes, site of Irving commencements since 2004.
But this year’s ceremony will be the last mixing of secular and sacred during graduation in the Dallas-area school district.

Sometimes one comes upon the most profound, or apt, descriptions of things in the most unexpected places.
So it was the other day as we were reading one of the Maggody series of mysteries featuring Chief of Police Arly (short for Ariel) Hanks of the tiny Arkansas town of Maggody, population 755, written by Joan Hess who resides in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Once a week, I walk out of the office with a pile of newspapers.
They’re not intended for the birdcage; nor for my fire pit.
Rather, I carry them home for research purposes.
You see, even though several times a day I check our news and sports in their various stages of work-flow, I also go through each printed edition.
Folks in the press room will tell you, I’m often standing at the end of the folder as the first make-ready copies roll off.
What I am looking for is simple … what I hope you are looking for.

Heart and soul.
This is what I call our school here at Walnut Hill — our heart and soul.
It has been the heart of our community, our teachers, our children and our families for many, many years.
At the end of this month, it will be closing for good, and all the wonderful children who have passed through her doors will be a thing of the past.
The wonderful memories we all have shared, the backbone of our community, and one of the best educational institutions in Roane County will be gone.
It has devastated our family here at school.

Did you ever get the feeling you were being watched? When your skin crawled and chills surged up your back as if an icy hand had suddenly been thrust against your bare flesh?
If you have, you can relax and continue grocery shopping.
It could just be a recent letter-to-the-editor writer of Harriman being himself and “noticing” what other people buy in the grocery store.

By GENE POLICINSKI
First Amendment Center
Wanna keep a secret? Betcha can’t — particularly when it involves an arrest and later the resignation of a local teacher.
But when allegations of improper conduct involving a teacher are involved, principals still keep trying to stifle the news through the heavy-handed — and futile — method of censoring the school publication.

Gentle reader, there is much talk nowadays about the subject matter and the quality of our educational system.
This talk, and more, is fully warranted by the present state of knowledge among the general population, but unfortunately this has become bogged down in a right-wing ideological morass, with the only real action being taken consisting of attacking the teachers’ unions.
This will produce nothing other than increased rancor and ill will, leaving the coming generation to be even less well educated than their elders.